I have decided.....

[ProphetsDementia]

From now on, I will not post or announce any sort of project I'm working on until it's 90-100% finished. I get too dependant on other people's invaluable posts which results in my never-finishing-anything-syndrome.
(As you can guess, Elementz fell through.)

So, there. The Prophet has spoken.

[tr1p1ea]

Actually, this is the same kind of stance i have taken. It can be death to a project to announce it too early for some reason.

Best of luck with your future endevours .

[kv83]

I have the exact opposite stance actually. With noone knowing about your project, the motivation will grow thin very quickly.

Edit: No, that wasn't on purpose.

[Jim e]

It can be death to a project to announce it too early for some reason.

Without noone knowing about your project, the motivation will grow thin very quickly.

You're both right!

Announcing and not announcing both cause instant death to projects.

[King Harold]

100% death to all projects whether you announce them or not, lol, how does anyone ever finish something that way?

Good luck to you ProphetsDementia, I'm sure you can finish something - even I have

[kalan_vod]

It can be death to a project to announce it too early for some reason.

Without noone knowing about your project, the motivation will grow thin very quickly.

You're both right!

Announcing and not announcing both cause instant death to projects.

I agree more with kv, but if no one cares enough about it then it dies faster...But at the same time I can find spurts of motivation from working either way.

Good luck with this, I am sure it is for the best..

[King Harold]

Hm when I read this again.. KV says the same as tr1p, was that double denial a mistake?

[Liazon]

i agree with tr1p1ea, but i prefer to keep the project's existence private among possible beta testers and people i ask help from.

but i haven't revealed an projects... yet.... XD

[coelurus]

I kept my only real calc project secret since it was "small" enough. There was no reason let everybody know about it until it was done.
But I've told a couple of people about my other disgustingly ambitious project, simply because it's so frigging big and so I gotta make sure some people will break my neck if I don't finish it They probably wouldn't care very much if I quit, but they'd be very happy if I finished it (a lot of people would), and thinking about that gives me 'nuff motivation.

[Halifax]

A lot of things can cause projects to die. My advice is think really really hard about a project you seriously want to do and then start working on it. If it is coming along fine and you are at about %10 then annouce it. Then if people are responding to it then feed off of their motivation and keep coding. If it feels like nobody is there then lay off the updates and keep working on it until you get further and then keep updating until someone catches onto the project.

That is just a good way in my opinion of how not to make a project die.

[Timendus]

Hmm, my new philosophy is "release early, release often". A big problem with our little community seems to be that nobody ever finishes anything. So just work on a project untill you get bored by it (which is usually within the first week), and release the most fancy demo binary you have with source code. Licence it somehow (GPL) and give it to an escrow-like service (ticalc.org for example; somewhere that puts a date on it and that is reliable). That way people can't just steal it and pretend it's theirs, but others can pick it up and finish where you left off.

Releasing does not, I repeat: NOT, mean that you can't work on it anymore, like everyone here seems to think. I think we're just pressuring each other too much with all the expectations of a first release. We're not the gaming industry. First releases don't have to be perfect. In fact, they don't even have to do anything but prove a concept. If we'd all take that stance not a single project would have to die. It could just be incomplete, but that's still much better than dead.

With all the projects going on here, you'd think we'd have an incredible pile of code floating around for others to learn from, get inspiration from, improve on... But since everyone is too damned afraid to release anything we're not improving on anything anymore. We're all just inventing the same wheel in our own time on our own projects. Nobody even gives a damn about the API, because for some reason you can't use other people's code in this community, and you certainly can't release your own for the greater good of an API. What do you think would've happened if the first pioneers of calculator programming would've kept their knowledge to themselves?

I say we move along with the open source movement. Put an end to dead projects, share code and ideas and make the calculator scene fun again.

[King Harold]

Hey, I do give a damn about the API! I love it!
I also find it hard to release stuff.. (everyone thinks I don't do anything lol.. windows reports 136 selected items when I ctrl+A in the project map of latenite though)

Let's all just listen to Timendus, he's right

[CoBB]

That way people can't just steal it and pretend it's theirs, but others can pick it up and finish where you left off.

How many times did that happen? I know for sure that the only piece of code I ever used was the good old ionfastcopy... And I did look through ticalc’s archives back in the olden times.

In fact, they don't even have to do anything but prove a concept. If we'd all take that stance not a single project would have to die. It could just be incomplete, but that's still much better than dead.

Depends on the degree of incompleteness. It doesn’t really serve the community if real releases are mixed with huge piles of unfinished test code.

But since everyone is too damned afraid to release anything we're not improving on anything anymore. We're all just inventing the same wheel in our own time on our own projects.

That’s mostly not a matter of code sharing, but rather the lack of creativity. There’s very little reusable code around, since a game that is sufficiently different from everything released earlier is often unique enough to require, say, a special tilemap engine.

There’s a very important difference from the rest of the open source world: projects are simply not big enough to require the cooperation of many individuals, so there’s absolutely no such tradition. And you can’t expect set ways to suddenly change all by themselves. You need to evangelise your innovations, raise awareness of them, and not give up too fast in the face of general indifference...

Nobody even gives a damn about the API, because for some reason you can't use other people's code in this community, and you certainly can't release your own for the greater good of an API.

I think the main problem with the API is that it offers a very limited set of routines. It is useful to take a few snippets from, but it doesn’t make writing original code easier. The concept is excellent, but these things require to be much more ‘massive’ to work. And yes, it can’t really grow without the participation of many people, unless someone takes the time to go hunting for routines in the wild, then clean up, classify and document them...

What do you think would've happened if the first pioneers of calculator programming would've kept their knowledge to themselves?

But if you think about it, there wasn’t much information exchange going on. We just used shells, while some of the more curious individuals like Detached Solutions members cranked out interesting pieces of software, but none of that initiated public developer discussions. For instance, I find it quite shocking how no-one seemed to realise for many years that ion.inc comes with a bad saferam equate... The only breath of fresh air, at least to me, was the Unification Project (by the way, did anyone actually release a sensible shell for the 82 since then?), then our beloved PTI discussions. Remember, it was not so long ago, and it was only that time that we figured out elementary things like proper interrupt handling. And so on and on...

I say we move along with the open source movement. Put an end to dead projects, share code and ideas and make the calculator scene fun again.

It sounds nice, but I don’t believe in that... It might be useful in some special cases, but not for most projects, which will just lay there unfinished regardless of the availability of the source.

[hop]

Also, lazyness.

[Timendus]

Thanks King Harold

That way people can't just steal it and pretend it's theirs, but others can pick it up and finish where you left off.

How many times did that happen?

Which part? The stealing? I don't know, but people are always talking about how they don't want that to happen
The picking up where someone else left off? Well, one example I recall is GPP -> RGP. There are probably a few others.

that's still much better than dead.

Depends on the degree of incompleteness. It doesn’t really serve the community if real releases are mixed with huge piles of unfinished test code.

I agree. But what I meant wasn't unfinished test code, but first running proof of concept demos of projects.

There’s very little reusable code around, since a game that is sufficiently different from everything released earlier is often unique enough to require, say, a special tilemap engine.

Sure, but still it'd be nice to have a few tilemapping engines lying around to learn from, or to adapt, if you need one for your game. And besides, how many forms of tilemapping are there..? Also; who knows someone combines several timemapping routines to make one big compile-time-scaleable tilemapping interface; those kinds of projects are too big for one person if you ask me.

There’s a very important difference from the rest of the open source world: projects are simply not big enough to require the cooperation of many individuals, so there’s absolutely no such tradition.

Maybe you're right, but then please do tell my why so many people abandon nice projects because they take too much of their time? Couldn't it be that it's the other way around: there are no bigger projects because we can't properly cooperate..? Vera is a nice example of that: we had an idea for a big project, gathered some people, but couldn't communicate or work together properly.

I agree with you on the API part. But if the community were more open, there'd be more people interested in the concept, who in turn would contribute to it.

...none of that initiated public developer discussions. For instance, I find it quite shocking how no-one seemed to realise for many years that ion.inc comes with a bad saferam equate

That's exactely my point... I was just using the idea of "the first pioneers" to give you all that nice fuzzy feeling of hacker-group-ness...

It sounds nice, but I don’t believe in that... It might be useful in some special cases, but not for most projects, which will just lay there unfinished regardless of the availability of the source.

You're probably right, but I think it's a huge waste to see the good projects die, and if they were open others would've picked them up soon enough. I guess you can imagine which projects I'm thinking off There are even a few projects which I personally would've contributed to if that were possible.

But maybe it's just not the Maxcoderz style... The people on this forum have always been more of a group of individuals who show each other what they're working on than a group of people making software together.